WELCOME STRANGER Read online

  They continued with the rehearsal until they came to the part where the Mae West was saying, ‘I often had to pass through France on my way back to school. I loved looking out of the window of the train at night. I used to wish I could be the Devil Asmodée. Do you remember him? The one that lifts the roofs off houses. Nothing in the world has ever seemed to me quite so mysterious as one of those old country houses . . .’

  The producer said, ‘This particular house is in a remote, hot part of the country. These people are stifled, imprisoned by the heat. None of you has so far given that impression. It is hot and sultry, and you must reflect that in every movement.’

  The Mae West said something about wondering whether they were putting the play on at the right time of the year. The producer said that the theatre had nothing to do with the everyday, and the season was summer. The Mae West, cowed, said, ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘We’ll go back to Marcelle’s entrance.’

  Most of the players were reading from books. It was surprising that in spite of this, and the inappropriate climate, on the second reading one began to sense the inadmissible passion rigidly suppressed. Alice visualised the remote house in south-west France in high summer, the sun streaming through the windows; and then, at the end, in autumn, life turning inwards as Marcelle and Blaise Lebel are left to keep each other company.

  Is it all in the play? Irene wondered, or is it partly these people? Are they, now that they have left the war world, having to cut themselves down to the size acceptable in civilian life, to fit themselves into jobs they don’t like? Is this where they escape to so that they can let their hobbled passions out in this dark little hall? Or is it just that they can’t face the real world? Do they become someone else when they come here, pick up another personality at the door? Or do they find in their adopted character the unimaginable things they dare not permit to surface in their daytime lives? Where is reality for them, inside or outside? But what is Louise doing among them, apart from the fact that she is a good actress?

  Louise, of all people, seemed to have no need of a mask behind which to hide, she who had shocked them all not so much by becoming pregnant in her teens, as by her lack of repentance. And there had been at least one man during the war, or so Irene had always suspected. Now, while the others felt warily for emotion, Louise seemed to have no need to dredge deep into herself, the feelings were all there, bubbling close to the surface.

  As though her thoughts had been conveyed to him, the producer said, ‘This is all coming to you too easily, Louise. Much too extrovert. This woman is a complex character. Try to imagine you have a sore place in your mouth which makes it painful to talk to Blaise. Then, when you are with Harry, we shall notice the change in you.’

  The Mae West gave a wolf whistle, and then slapped his hand and said, ‘Down, Fido!’ The producer looked at him as if he had taken leave of his senses.

  ‘Is Guy coming?’ Irene whispered to Alice.

  ‘He stays at home. I offered to look after the children, but he doesn’t seem interested in the theatre any more.’

  There was a gas ring in the prop room and later the stage manager made tea while Alice and Irene put out cups. The stage manager was a woman. She wore naval bellbottoms tucked into Wellington boots and a shapeless fisherman’s jersey with holes at the elbows and splashes of engine oil across the chest. A cigarette hung from her lower lip and one smoke-blinded eye was half-closed. Her conversation tended to the monosyllabic. When the producer spoke to her she said, ‘Yup’ or ‘Roger’. She was the only person to whom he deferred, and when on one occasion she said gruffly, ‘No can do,’ he answered, ‘I’ll leave it to you to work something else out.’

  ‘Did you come across her in the Wrens?’ Irene asked Alice.

  ‘No. She was an air mechanic. Fleet Air Arm. They ate nails for breakfast.’

  The players sat on the edge of the stage drinking tea, while the producer tapped his fingers impatiently as he read through his notes.

  Louise said to Alice, ‘We shall need you soon.’

  The men were telling service jokes, including the stage manager in their company as if she were a man. Alice inclined her head in the direction of the Mae West. ‘Do you think he is right for the part?’

  ‘He has a marvellous presence on stage,’ Louise said. ‘As soon as he comes on, I feel confident that it’s going to be all right.’

  ‘He seems a bit lightweight.’

  ‘But he’s the only character who stands outside all this. He comes, and he goes, untouched by it – except of course that he takes Emmy away. Don’t you understand that?’

  ‘I can see that he’s good as a catalyst,’ Alice said, still doubtful. ‘But Asmodée tears the roofs off houses before he goes.’

  Louise shrugged her shoulders, but the producer who was standing near them, turned to look thoughtfully at Alice.

  ‘What an uncomfortable play,’ Irene said as they walked away from the theatre, leaving the cast to run through the final act again. ‘Thank goodness for four strong walls around me, and no one likely to come tearing off the roof.’

  Chapter Two

  At the beginning of February, Angus Drummond met Guy Immingham as they left All Saints, Langham Place, after attending a memorial service. Guy’s modesty necessitated his disclaiming personal knowledge of so eminent a man as the deceased.

  ‘I didn’t know him,’ he said, as they walked down Portland Place. ‘I came to represent my firm.’

  ‘He was in banking, I seem to remember?’ Angus had known the man in the Resistance. The war had forged links between unlikely people. ‘Sad to have come through so much, only to walk into a bus.’

  At a time when most young men, including Guy, were wearing demob suits, Angus was expensively tailored. Guy, unsure of himself in spite of his good looks, was acutely embarrassed by the package he was carrying – bananas wrapped in newspaper. He felt he must look like an office boy. ‘I’m not going back to the office – I’ve had enough for one day. And, in any case, I shouldn’t get back much before six.’ He checked himself, remembering he did not have to justify his absence to Angus. ‘So I’m bearing my trophies with me. I don’t suppose the children can remember what a banana tastes like.’

  Angus said, ‘Ah yes, atrocious weather in the North Sea, whaling fleets in trouble, wheat crops failing worldwide; but on the credit side, the banana makes a comeback. Well, if you are not going back to the office – and I certainly am not – come and have tea with me. Or something stronger, if you prefer. I live near here.’ As he said this, he stopped as if about to cross the road, but really in order to see what the man carrying the tool bag would do. The man turned into a side street. Which is what I would do at this point if I was shadowing someone, Angus thought. He walked on and did not look round again. This was not occupied France, but England, where no one had good reason to be suspicious of him.

  Guy was pleased to accept Angus’s invitation. They had been talking about the Drummond family at home the other night. Angus was friendly with Irene Kimberley and there had been speculation as to whether they would marry. Irene would do very well if Angus lived in this district. This is what I would like for Louise, Guy thought as they walked past a terrace of Georgian houses. Angus said, ‘Here we are!’ inserting a key in a door marked Flat i. He picked up letters from the mat and, gesturing Guy into a room off the narrow hall, said, ‘If you’ll excuse me a moment.’

  The room in which Guy found himself was unnervingly quiet. In his own home, the sitting-room showed so much evidence of activity that on the rare occasions when he was alone in it he had the comfortable feeling of life still going on around him. Even in his immaculate childhood home, there had been a sense of his mother’s busyness – gleaming ornaments, waxed table, polished hearth. Here there was cool, disinterested elegance which had no need of people. The only sign of occupation was a copy of The Times lying on the settee. Guy picked it up. It had been folded with the foreign page uppermost. Anti-Jewish feeling in
Poland was reported to have created an attitude of panic. It had been suggested that the Jews had in mind a second exodus which would take them from Europe to Palestine; a sinister co-ordinating organisation had been hinted at. Always trouble with the Jews, Guy thought wryly. Louise’s sister, Alice, had been very upset by the Belsen films because her friend, Katia Vaseyelin, had disappeared in Germany in the Thirties. Guy, with memories he could not put out of his mind, had sympathised with her, but Louise had said that grieving over what could not be changed was a form of self¬indulgence. It would not have been possible to explain to her that once something has happened, it cannot be undone; that the incineration of Jews, and the aftermath of atrocity which Guy had witnessed, were now a part of the fabric of life and must somehow be accommodated. How lonely one was sometimes! Louise was so different from him. She seemed to need a hidden place that was all her own; whereas he was terrified of finding himself alone. ‘Everything I have I want to share with you,’ he would insist. ‘I want you to know everything that has ever happened to me.’ He had always needed others to validate his experiences. His hands trembled on the paper. He had to fight down an impulse to rush out and find Angus. But this did not seem the sort of establishment where one could barge into the kitchen and offer to carry something. His fear of intrusion won a narrow victory over his fear of isolation.

  Angus came into the room carrying a tray of drinks. He could see perfectly well what Guy had been reading, but he said, ‘The Americans have made their first contact with the moon. A radar signal has been beamed on it, and the moon, it seems, has sent back an echo. Was that wise, one asks oneself?’

  ‘I don’t suppose the moon will do us much harm.’

  ‘God knows what the Americans may do to it, though. Probably put a man up there, on the principle that if you can see it, you’ve got to own it. Not that one should grumble about them; they can be generous.’ He picked up a bottle. ‘Bourbon, believe it or not! Say when.’

  ‘I’m not much of a drinker,’ Guy said hastily.

  Angus diluted the bourbon with what he considered a generous splash of soda. He handed the glass to Guy and strolled to the window. There was a car parked further down the street. It had been there on previous evenings; but surely they wouldn’t be foolish enough to use the same car all the time? Unless, of course, they wanted him to know that they were keeping him under supervision. It was hard to understand their motives – they were a deeply suspicious people. Perhaps they would never really trust him.

  Guy, looking at Angus, envied him the thick hair which showed no sign of receding at the temples, and was as glossily dark as when he was a boy. In his fifties, he would probably look much as he did now: a spare, handsome man. Guy’s observations went no further. He did not notice that while the top half of the domed head was donnish – broad, high forehead, thoughtful eyes – the face tapered to a pointed chin which was disconcertingly girlish, giving an impression that his Maker had been divided in his purpose when he fashioned these bones.

  ‘You’re at the Foreign Office, aren’t you?’ Guy asked.

  ‘In and around, you know.’ Angus was secretive by habit. He had spent so long impersonating other characters he found it difficult to decide what it was appropriate for him to say.

  ‘Well, I’m definitely in Busby and Overton,’ Guy said ruefully.

  ‘The firm hasn’t changed?’

  ‘That was what I dreaded. But, in fact, it hasn’t turned out that way. Old Overton died last year, and his son is one of the partners now. Back from the Commandos and wanting to make up for lost time.’ Guy looked into his glass. ‘I suppose you might call him dynamic’

  ‘Exhausting.’

  ‘You can’t rush everything. Some of my clients are quite old. I have to spend a bit of time with them, even if their accounts aren’t worth all that much to the firm.’ He was good with old people.

  Angus studied Guy, automatically registering that this was a man he would never be able to impersonate. Innocence is a quality you cannot assume if you don’t happen to have it. He recalled Guy in the days when he was first in love with Louise, so baffled by her beauty, so openly vulnerable. Even then, although they were much the same age, Angus had felt infinitely older. In spite of his shyness, Guy had expressed his pleasures with a naïve unsophistication which had amused Angus and which he now found rather touching. Touching, of course, because that naïveté was now flawed. Guy had been a handsome young man in the quiet, self-effacing English manner. He was still very presentable, but his were the looks which owe much to good nature, and do not wear well once the bloom goes off life. Already puzzlement dimmed the trusting brightness of the eyes and there was a trace of petulance in the line of the mouth – nothing important as yet, merely the irritation of the man unable to solve a key clue in a crossword puzzle. But the face was still innocent, in the way that some women will always seem innocent however often they may have been betrayed.

  ‘How is Louise?’ he asked, as if they had been talking about her.

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘And the children?’ Not that he would have recalled them, but for the bananas.

  Guy looked out of the window. ‘They’ve sprouted up quite a bit while I’ve been away. Takes time to get accustomed to it.’

  ‘You were away for long?’

  ‘From Dunkirk onwards. The desert, the Italian campaign.’ Angus had expected that, like many rather inadequate men, he might want to take refuge in his wartime experiences, but he responded by turning the conversation away from himself. ‘You’re still doing the same sort of thing, I suppose?’

  ‘More or less.’ He picked up Guy’s glass. ‘Same again?’

  Guy looked at his watch. ‘I must be getting home soon.’ As Angus was already pouring bourbon, he said, ‘Oh well. One for the road. With more soda, please.’

  When Angus had refilled his own glass, Guy said, ‘What do you make of the United Nations business? You must see more than most of us. It looks as if the Russians are all set to make trouble from the outset.’

  ‘I expect they thought we were making a bit of trouble when we made it clear that atomic energy was one secret we had no intention of sharing with our Allies.’

  ‘But how could we share it?’ Guy looked astonished. ‘We have to make sure it is one weapon which is never used.’

  ‘And so it is safest in the hands of the only people to have used it?’

  He usually monitored his speech carefully, but he was growing increasingly reckless in the expression of his views about Russia. One part of him was obsessively vigilant, the other thought that nothing mattered; it was becoming quite difficult to reconcile the two. Fortunately, Guy had not noticed. He was saying, ‘That’s how Claire talks. Her husband is very much to the Left, you know – reads the New Statesman and that sort of thing.’

  ‘And Claire accepts it as if it was holy writ, I suppose?’

  ‘Oh yes, she says we should be perfecting life here and now.’

  ‘I don’t know about that.’ Angus had suddenly become languid; had drained from him. ‘But that’s my trouble. I don’t really know what I think about anything.’ He did not seem to be addressing himself to Guy.

  He wants me to go, Guy thought; I shouldn’t have accepted that second drink. He got up, flushed with embarrassment and would have forgotten the bananas had Angus not called after him.

  The treat, as with so many of his enterprises, was not greatly appreciated. Louise had tried to suggest to him that it would not help him to settle down with the children if he was constantly making emotional demands on them. James was ten, and Catherine eight, and neither had learnt to dissemble. Louise herself had little use for pretence. Her face registered irritation when he produced his gift. If they ate the wretched things they would have indigestion all night, and if they didn’t Guy would be hurt. She left them to resolve this dilemma in their own way.

  Catherine said ‘Ugh!’ when she tasted the banana.

  ‘She’s always been faddy,’ Louise to
ld Guy. The constant need to explain the children to him emphasised his isolation.

  James ate half his banana to please his father, and gave the other half to the dog, who licked it suspiciously and left it on the rug where Guy subsequently trod on it.

  Louise gave vent to her annoyance and she and James had one of the arguments which Guy found so distressing. Louise never felt guilty about anger and so she was never shrewish. She had been looking rather heavy about the face, but now, with heightened colour and combative eyes, she was quite handsome. As a girl she had been beautiful; Guy had seen her as a light that glowed at his approach, a flower that opened to his touch. But she had grown into a woman who scoffed as such notions; and although she was more vibrant now than when she was a girl, she was often too forceful for him.

  ‘When you grow up you will leave home and you can do just as you like,’ she was saying to James. ‘But while you are here, you will have to clear up after yourself.’

  ‘It’s not fair!’ he protested.

  ‘Oh, nothing in life is fair,’ she mocked.

  ‘Aunt Claire says that it is wrong to thwart children,’ he said when he had cleaned the carpet. ‘She says that whatever you do, you must never say “no” to a child.’

  ‘I’m sorry for you two, then,’ Louise retorted. ‘Think how I must have crippled you!’

  ‘We’re glad you are thinking about it,’ Catherine said.

  ‘But you’ve left it too late,’ James said.

  ‘Aunt Alice will put you in a book,’ Catherine said.

  ‘All about a mother who ill-treats her children, and so they run away . . .’

  ‘And live in a forest, like Hansel and Gretel . . .’

  Guy said uneasily, ‘What nonsense you children do talk!’

  ‘You can take the dog out now,’ Louise said to James.

  ‘What about Catherine?’